After this victory, Ptolemy overran all the country; and when night
came on, he abode in certain villages of Judea, which when he found full
of women and children, he commanded his soldiers to strangle them, and
to cut them in pieces, and then to cast them into boiling caldrons, and
then to devour their limbs as sacrifices. This commandment was given, that
such as fled from the battle, and came to them, might suppose their enemies
were cannibals, and eat men's flesh, and might on that account be still
more terrified at them upon such a sight. And both Strabo and Nicholaus
[of Damascus] affirm, that they used these people after this manner, as
I have already related. Ptolemy also took Ptolemais by force, as we have
declared elsewhere.